A-level results: How girls plan to celebrate across the UK – regardless of grades

Boys and girls can often respond very differently to their exam results, but
regardless of grades, both sexes should be out celebrating the end of their
school years, says Lizzie Porter, who speaks to a few school leavers
about their plans from flame throwing and stilt walking parties to the
weekend's V Festival.

A level results: You're celebrating the end of your school years, regardless of gradesPhoto: PA

Their tweets are imperfectly calibrated glimpses into teenage fear. “This time next week ill be literally having a heart attack #alevels #results”, went one. Another said: “I just love feeling chunder-licious. #A-levels #ResultsDay #Cry.”

One more: “just wish all my fellow a levellers good luck tomorrow and not the smart wee b*stards #resultsday #alevels #nerves.”

Ahhh, the things teenagers say on publicly available forums.

It’s totally fine to feel sick to the stomach on opening that envelope, or downloading that results page. The Facebook group “I'm shi***ng it for my A-level Results”, with 5,466 “likes”, sums up the mood. Its roster of take-your-mind-off-it memes is the 2013 equivalent of (in my day) listening to Peter Andre and B*witched summer hits to take one’s mind off it all.

Remember to stop and celebrate – regardless of grades

A-level results promise an awkward day, on which those who did well try not to stop themselves exploding with happiness, while feeling genuinely sorry for those who didn’t get their anticipated grades. My own celebration involved lots of grubby trains, a wonky punt trip along the river Cam, and some warm alcopops. Truth be told, I was also already fretting about the work I was going to have to do before my university course started that October. In hindsight, I should have taken a bit more time to recognise what a massive achievement surviving A-levels was, and how it was a turning point in life.

You might be surprised to hear that it’s only a few girls who do the jumping-in-the-air-waving-results-papers-and-smiling-inanely thing on results day. Actually, everyone who gets what they were hoping for should give themselves a huge pat on the back. Months of blood, sweat and tears (often literally) need reward and celebration. Honestly. Take the time to say, “well done, me. I worked hard and I got what I deserved. I am a good person.”

Pupils at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls in Cheshire are trying to ignore the torrent of articles on 'girls being stressed and anxious about exams', and have some excellent celebration plans lined up. Elmyra Chinje, who is predicted 4 A*s – wow – says, “a group of us are planning on going out in Manchester during the evening for an A Level results party.”

Do girls and boys celebrate differently though? Is there the post-A-Levels equivalent of stag and hens’ nights, where the sexes must be separated in some sort of “off-to-university” ritual? Not according to Samantha Ladds and Sarah Pummell, from Ormiston Bushfield Academy in Peterborough, who are both expecting top results on Thursday. Sam needs AAB to get onto her English and History course at Birmingham University (she’s predicted AAA) and Sarah needs ABB to get into UEA in Norwich (she’s predicted AAB).

Their friendship group has made a big plan to go “out on the town”, apart from those who aren’t yet 18, of course. Sam and Sarah say that girls and guys will separate to get ready and “pre-drink and stuff” but they’ll be meeting up once they’re out.

They pointed out, though, that, “at GCSE there’s a bit more of a divide – boys aren’t really that bothered, whereas girls would be more likely to meet up with their friends and do something to celebrate.”

A meal with the History staff and the teaching group is also on the cards for the Ormiston Bushfieldpupils, near Peterborough (I love this idea. It proves teachers don’t go back into cupboards, robot-like, at 3.30pm every day).

And if it doesn’t all go to plan?

“We’d end up being persuaded to go out … it would be a topic unspoken of, just trying to enjoy the night,” the girls say. But, still, when girls don’t get the grades they hoped for, “they take it to heart a lot more, whereas boys … they’ll just go out either way,” they say.

The celebrations don’t stop there – and I’m delighted to hear it – Sam and Sarah are planning to go to V Festival this weekend, with a mixed group of 10 others, “celebrating or drowning our sorrows”.

Elmyra from Altrincham Grammar agrees that there is no gender divide when it comes to celebration: “We’ll definitely be celebrating with the boys – we did the same last year for AS Levels and one of my best friends is a boy so it’d be weird not to.”

Something quirkier is in the pipeline for Amy Weaver, who took Biology, Maths and Performing Arts at Marine Academy Plymouth.She’s off to pub-cum-club The Walkabout, which is hosting a circus themed do for school leavers, complete with flame throwing, stilt walkers and jugglers. And bouncy castles (you’re never too old, after all).

Results day can be upsetting for some – but they should remember the bigger picture – it's the end of an era, experts say

Trevona Jennings, ofHaringey Sixth Form Centre, points out that it will be a time “to celebrate the end of college” as much as finishing A-levels. That’s something that’s often forgotten. We get so wrapped up in results – and yes, of course they are important – that we often forget the end of school also marks the end of a significant phase of life – your school years.

That’s something that Dr Richard Graham, consultant adolescent psychiatrist at Capio Nightingale Hospital, has observed. The moment a teenager receives their A-level results, he says, is a “very potent cocktail of excitement, achievement, and exhilaration at having got to the end, with an almost mourning process of leaving childhood and your school. Even going separate ways with friends. So no wonder there is a sort of lively, party atmosphere, which I think is intended to deal with the excitement of achievement and feeling daunted with all these other aspects of life.”

He says both girls and boys enjoy fairly stable “rituals” (like going to music festivals and parties) because “rites of passage of leaving home and becoming independent and managing new groups at that age are shared.”

This is a very good thing, in my book: it would be worrying if girls felt they had to adhere to spa-days-and-pampering “female” activities, while letting boys do “male” things like going to sit in muddy fields at music festivals.

Boys and girls treat results differently

Experts notice differences in how males and females respond to disappointing results, though. Jane Phelps, director of external relations at the New College of Humanities, and former head of higher education and careers at Rugby School, has worked with A-level students for over 19 years, and definitely sees a difference between how girls and boys react if they don’t get the grades they hoped for. “For most girls, if they are one grade off, or even one point off in a module, it’s the end of the world. They need comfort and support and explanation that it isn’t the end of life as we know it.”

She says that boys, however much they tend to “put their head in the sand”, are actually “desperately disappointed” if they don’t get their grades.

Take time out to enjoy the end-of-school moment

Whatever gender, though, Phelps says students must absolutely take the time to enjoy that glorious-yet-frightening end of school moment. “You must celebrate. Celebrate with friends, celebrate with family. Even if you haven’t got exactly what you’d hoped, you’ve still done really well.”

Professor Patrick Tissington, head of the organisational psychology department at Birkbeck University of London, points out that although levels of attainment are converging at A-level, boys and girls still respond differently to what they have achieved.

“One of the key differences is that boys tend to be more hierarchical, individualistic – generally – and girls tend to be more collaborative. The way this will pan out in terms of exam results is that girls will tend to be far more concerned about what their friends have done, and how they are feeling, in general terms, than boys would.”

He adds: “There’s a terrible silence when someone sees they haven’t got what they wanted, and girls would be more likely to pick up on that than boys would. And even if boys do notice that in other people, girls will be much more likely to show it. They tend to score more highly on scales to do with empathy.”

So to anyone celebrating their A Level results today, you can do better than my precarious punt trip and National Rail’s finest to celebrate. You’ve survived a great tipping point in life, and yes, adulthood awaits. Scary as it may be, this is something to celebrate. You’ve survived. Enjoy the moment.

Lizzie Porter is a writer and can be found tweeting @lcmporter and on her blog.